“I start to feel a fundamental flaw to this whole plan”, sings Luke Caley. His distinctive voice, equal parts lairy geezer and sugary pop superstar, soaring over a distorted, jagged riff and followed by a three-part vocal harmony which evokes nothing so much as The Bangles’ 80s classic ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’. Safe to say that your response to that description of the opening moments of Press To Meco’s debut album, ‘Good Intent’, will calibrate the likelihood of you enjoying the rest of the record.
In Caley, bassist Adam Roffey and drummer Lewis Williams, Press to Meco are possessed of a trio of vocalists whose voices would be capable of carrying a band by themselves. Thankfully for us, the aforementioned “plan” was instead to brush up on their early-00s Lou Pearlman boy band harmonies in conjunction with jagged, rapid riffs. The results are occasionally off the wall but without question unlike anything else you’ll hear from a British rock band this year.
There are jarring rhythms which border on djent and guitar parts which evoke Killswitch Engage but the precision and rarity of the band’s vocal prowess softens the blow of what is, musically at least, almost a metalcore record. One minute you’re being bludgeoned by the blunt-force trauma of a snaking, discordant riff; the next, serenaded by a three-way croon unheard of outside of a trio of X-Factor hopefuls. As a whole, though, the album is misleading: there’s a clear evolution occurring here which is obscured by the band’s older material.
Sure, the catchier tracks from the band’s ‘Affinity’ EP (‘Honestly’ and ‘Affinity’) sit comfortably alongside newer material like ‘Diffusion of Responsibility’ and ‘Family Ties’. But just as Affinity’s ‘Tired Bones’ (also included here) hinted at a band edging towards something more substantial than an unusual-but-superficial pop-metal hybrid, ‘Autopsy’ and ‘Manipulate’ suggest, if not a different band, then a more mature one.
We get the sense that the band have included some of these older songs in order to justify the release of a full-length album and subsequently the end result suffers. That’s not to say that ‘Good Intent’ is bad by any means, but rather than a cohesive album it’s simply a collection of good songs. A little more time, and chasing the promise displayed on those newer songs, might have produced something truly great.
ROB BARBOUR